Let me get this straight, isn’t society supposed to be moving to “greener” solutions? Were we really doing better in the 70’s and 80’s?

DC and Baltimore are putting MoCo to shame

In neighboring Washington, DC they prohibit the use of styrofoam, instead they use compostable trays or reusable trays & a dishwasher. Are you telling me, that DC is greener and more responsible than us? Really?

Even Baltimore is well ahead of Montgomery County when it comes to caring for the environment. They collaborated on a composting program with the EPA and John’s Hopkins:

The pilot schools began separating their food waste as part of their daily routine and as a result of this pilot; participating schools diverted 34,525 pounds of waste from landfills and incinerators to be recycled into compost.

Uh-oh, are we disempowering kids in Montgomery County one styrofoam tray at a time?

In looking into this issue, I found a swell group of kids, the Young Activist Club, right here in Montgomery County that started tackling this issue in spring 2008. They put up a website; they created a petition; they raised 10,000 dollars. Their preference is to replace foam trays with a dishwasher and reusable trays.

They have been more successful in getting local businesses to go foam free. Kudos for that.

Has anything changed with the school system though? Not so much.

Don’t we want to empower kids so that they feel like they can have a positive impact?

Montgomery County School Board, are you out there? Are you listening? I really don’t think this issue is going to go away.

Despite the deaf ear of their elders in power, I’m glad to see a group of persistent and creative kids out there like the Young Activist Club. Check out the YouTUBE video they made recently.

Good news: some wins against foam trays:

Some big school districts have pulled their purchasing power together to get the price down on compostable trays. Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, Chicago and New York City — formed the Urban School Food Alliance –- to boost the schools’ purchasing power in the private sector. Compostable trays can cost as much as 15 cents a unit, compared to about 4 cents a unit for foam.

An EPA report on solid waste named the polystyrene manufacturing process as the 5th largest creator of hazardous waste. The process of making polystyrene pollutes the air and creates large amounts of liquid and solid waste, including greenhouse gas and harmful to the ozone layer.

Toxic chemicals leach out of these products into the food that they contain (especially when heated in a microwave). These chemicals threaten human health and reproductive systems.

These products are made with petroleum, a non-sustainable and heavily polluting resource.

Foam’s environmental and health impacts are bad and growing (bullet points are from Cleanwater Action’s site)

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